Tortured Dog Lay Lifeless on Road, Lifts Head When He Sees the Right Person Has Arrived

When most people think of animal abuse and cruelty, they probably imagine a serial-killer-like figure in a dark basement or a dog being raised in cage for fighting. But unfortunately, a great deal of dog abuse hides in plain sight, and the perpetrators might just be neighborhood kids.

Several years in the Forth Worth area, animal rescuer Judy Obregon received a picture of a dog that looked to be dead, lying on a sidewalk.

Obregon runs The Abandoned Ones (TAO), a rescue organization whose motto is “every animal matters.” When Obregon started receiving photos from people in the neighborhood about an abused dog, she was incredibly upset. The informers told her that kids in the neighborhood had been torturing the dog for their own amusement.

As Obregon posted on the TAO Facebook page, “I was told kids were trying to wrap a garden hose around his neck, and while they were doing that the poodle was wagging his tail […]”

The stories just got worse and worse: “then I was told the kids were throwing stuff into street so the dog could run and chase whatever it was they were throwing into street while cars were going by. Then I was told he was sprayed with water trapped into a corner while they laughed.”

The rescuer was worried sick about the dog, especially since no one could locate an owner or someone who was taking care of the dog. When she received the last photo with the dog lying immobile, Obregon was convinced that he was dead. As she told The Dodo, I started crying because I felt like I didn’t do enough.”

But this little guy definitely had nine lives and wasn’t ready to give up just yet. After searching and searching in the area, she finally found the dog curled up just like in the photo she had received.

“I was probably the happiest person in the world,” she told The Dodo. As Obregon wrote on TAO’s Facebook page, “he looked up at me with this look … where have u been !! Covered in mud, what look[ed] to be dry blood in his ears.”

Thankfully, for this poor poodle, which Obregon called Gully, life was about to get a whole lot better. According to The Dodo, Gully was so weak and dehydrated that she didn’t believe he would have lived much longer on his own.

Judy Obregon took Gully into the vet and was happy to find that he didn’t have any lasting injuries from the neighborhood kids’ torture. As she told The Dodo, “if it wasn’t for that neighbor, who I will never know, Gully wouldn’t be alive. She pretty much was the one who saved his life.”

It didn’t take long before Gully came back from the dead and showed his incredibly loving and wonderful personality. As she told The Dodo, “he started giving me kisses. He was a total transformation, I would say within 48 hours.”

After finding a foster home with her friend, Obregon eventually managed to find a loving forever home, where she told The Dodo, “the last update I got was that he was living life to the fullest.”

This incredible story of the little dog who literally came back from the dead reaffirmed Obregon’s faith in the capacity for all dogs to find their place. As she told The Dodo, “we showed him that not all humans were bad” and that made all the difference.